Judge Rules Newsmax Defamed Dominion Voting Systems By Backing Election Fraud Lie As Trump Takes Revenge On Law Firm
President Donald Trump is, once again, abusing the powers of the executive office, this time by signing an executive order to punish the law firm that held Fox News accountable for backing his election fraud lies, and he did so on the same day a judge found that Newsmax — which is basically the TEMU version of Fox News — also aired false claims while backing Trump’s “big lie.”
Let’s start with Newsmax.
According to NPR, on Wednesday, Delaware Judge Eric M. Davis ruled in favor of Dominion Voting Systems, which filed a defamation lawsuit against Newsmax, just as it did successfully against Fox News, accusing the network of airing false and defamatory claims that Dominion’s voting machines were rigged to transfer votes for Trump to President Joe Biden in 2020, an absurd claim Trump repeated often while, as usual, providing zero evidence to back his allegations.
From NPR:
In his opinion, Judge Eric M. Davis says Dominion “presents clear and convincing evidence” that shows Newsmax broadcast segments with inaccurate information that “would likely cause reasonable viewers to think significantly less favorably about Dominion than if the viewers knew the truth.” He also noted that Newsmax’s “clarification” posted in mid-December 2020 about a lack of evidence of voter fraud showed that Newsmax “acknowledged the falsity” of several lies regarding Dominion and the election.
If the lawsuit heads to trial as scheduled later this month, the jury will be asked to decide whether to award damages and how much, and whether the broadcasts were aired with “actual malice,” which means knowledge of falsity or disregard for the truth.
Davis is the same judge who presided over a similar defamation lawsuit Dominion brought against Fox News, which resulted in a $787.5 million settlement reached just hours before the matter was set to go to trial. (A lot of people believed it was a strategic move by Fox that would shield it from, as I previously wrote, ” having to admit during a nationally televised trial that it serves as a misinformation PornHub for conservative rubes and racists more than it serves as an institution of journalism.”)
Trump must have gotten wind of Davis’ recent ruling, which, by extension, reinforces the fact that Trump’s thoroughly debunked 2020 election fraud propaganda never had any merit. (You know — if the dozens of judges across lower courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court, the former head of election cybersecurity, Trump’s own attorney general and the Department of Justice, all of whom arrived at the same conclusion, weren’t already enough.) On the same day, Davis delivered his ruling, Trump signed an order clearly aimed at retaliating against Susman Godfrey, the law firm that represented Dominion in its suit against Fox News.
From the Independent:
In an executive order Trump signed at the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president is seeking to revoke the security clearances of the firm’s attorneys, slash federal contracts and limit their access to government buildings, making it extremely difficult for the agency to represent clients with any claims or business with the federal government.
Of course, Trump — who would never want to cement himself as a vindictive man-child who is so unbelievably corrupt that he would abuse his power as president to take revenge against a firm that was just doing its job — must have provided reporters with thorough, ironclad reasoning and evidence that would justify such a drastic move against Susman Godfrey and other firms involved in similar cases, right?
“There were some very bad things that happened with these law firms,” Trump said without further elaboration.
*sigh*
Trump’s senior advisor, Steven Miler, also chimed in, but only so he could perpetuate Trump’s propaganda regarding 2020 election interference that absolutely, unequivocally did not exist.
“This firm is very involved in the election misconduct,” Miller said of Susman Godfrey.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? Again, Trump tied up dozens of courts with allegations that the 2020 presidential race had been stolen from him only to be told over and over again that his cases had no merit, and that was after virtually every state official and every relevant official in his own administration had already told him there was no truth to it. Yet Trump and his minions still, to this day, are just carrying on as if the “election misconduct” they speak of is a matter of proven fact as opposed to the thoroughly disproven, evidence-deficient nonsense that it is in reality.
I mean, how many former Trump lawyers, like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, do these people have to watch crash and burn and go into financial ruin all because they backed Trump’s lie before they will just admit they were wrong about the 2020 presidential race, which Biden demonstrably won via a free and fair election?
In fact, Trump isn’t just perpetuating the lie, he’s coercing all of the law firms that were involved in cases against him and his big, ridiculous, undeniably disproven lie into doing pro bono work toward his ideological causes. And, what’s worse, some of those firms are caving.
More from the Independent:
“We signed with many law firms, the ones that we thought were inappropriate, and they’ve all agreed to pay… We have another five to go,” Trump declared while senior adviser Stephen Miller claimed that the administration was close to reaching a billion dollars in pro bono services from the targeted law firms.
Besides Susman Godfrey, Trump has sought to punish five other law firms with executive orders: Covington & Burling, Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale. While three of those agencies have chosen to fight and successfully obtained court orders blocking the president’s actions, other firms have caved and reached widely criticized agreements with the administration.
Paul Weiss, for instance, committed $40m in pro bono legal services to make the president’s executive order go away. Three other firms — Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Milbank LLP; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher — have reached pre-emptive deals with the administration in the hope of avoiding punishment.
Perhaps these firms that have bent to Trump’s will are run by cowards, or maybe they’re just what happens when a deeply corrupt and propaganda-prone administration wields its power and gets its way.
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